In the Beginning...

I had read about the other side of agriculture. While I was in graduate school I read Michael Pollan’s books and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I thought they were great stories of the way things should be. But I had to put those books back on the shelf and get through school. School that corporate Ag was paying for.  And so I put it all out of my mind: egg mobiles and growing your own tomatoes and cows on grass. I ordered my CSA box and ate my locally grown veggies, but I got on board to hate the smelt and that feedlots and CAFOS were the way to feed a growing population. The only way. And then one day, years after grad school was done, three years into my stint as a dairy nutritionist’s assistant, I melted down. I lost the path the others put before me. Somewhere in cow’s knee deep in manure because the flush doesn't work and calves with pneumonia no one notices, in the middle of an asthma attack probably caused by the aforementioned flush system, I decided it was time to walk away. There had to be a better way. 

When I was in school we called the real animal lovers petters. I suppose as horse people who were we to judge? These were the people who refused to brand or castrate. They cried and said but his name is Ferdinand while we were branding bull calves in our beef lab. When I went out into the field, I didn't want to be a petter. I tried really hard. I looked at it with a scientist’s distance. While you’re taking animal science classes they tell you if any of this was really stressful these animals wouldn’t produce the way they do. Stress inhibits growth, reproduction, and milk production. I told myself all these things. Dairy is tough. It’s a tough business, I just don’t know that I think anyone should own 6,000 animals. Let alone 12,000. It’s easy to let things fall between the cracks and to try to save a buck here and there. With a 30% cull rate, you can’t get attached to every animal or apparently any animal. Fourth or fifth lactation animals are old. With a first lactation at 2 that means these animals are 6 or 7 years old. They lay down and don’t get up one day, or they blow their udder or they stop producing and go to beef. It’s the circle of life. I tried not to be a petter. I tried not to pat their heads and let them lick my jeans, but I did. And maybe I am a petter, but I think we can do this better. 

Somewhere in the middle refers to what my friend Meridith always tells me. That what I'm looking for is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere between rain dances and goddess prayer circles at Eco-Farm and mega dairies. Somewhere in the middle is the food system I want to be apart of. For Sara, somewhere in the middle falls between regimented super healthy diets where food loses it's magic and not paying attention at all where food makes you unhealthy . As a combined effort, this blog will explore the somewhere in the middle of agriculture as I try to figure out what I think is right and find the animal science I signed up for and somewhere in the middle of nutrition where Sara is finding that food is still fun. Together these things make a food system and somewhere in the middle there is magic.